Two years has passed, more or less, and, for some reason, I now have to re-light and write about my emotional fire that truthfully has no reason to burn but I won't say why, now, for years of living amongst ALS has left me broke and now living in a far greater anxious situation as ALS left my family in tatters.

If I did the ice bucket scenario, I would just assume drown myself. I won't continue writing this tragedy without someone who believes in me and with the financial opportunity to keep me writing. I will leave the comments open and see what happens unless it gets to be irritating and pointless. My path is soon to splinter and I just don't know where I will go after 21 years of living amongst ALS.

Keep on dunking but know why you are doing it and how the 30,000+ American families afflicted with the disease stay strong and committed knowing that research and product development can make living amongst ALS and living with ALS more hopeful and with a better quality of life from the generous donations of all involved.

Maybe in the cold winter time people can dunk themselves with scalding water to really show their commitment to find a cure for this bastard of a disease called ALS.

I should have gone to law school. Three times downtown we have trekked without even getting to my evidence. Finally, this past week the technicalities are now resolved and in a few weeks, I can "show and tell" what I spent hours and hours on arranging, rearranged, tossing out, tossing back in, rearranging and re-writing. I now truly appreciate how an ethical lawyer can spend so much time putting a case together. I can also appreciate the years that lawyers spent in law school mastering their craft and skills. Needless to say, we can't afford a lawyer in this matter and, so, I will give it my best shot. Worst case, the asshole only gets a year. The best outcome will be a long sentence in a federal prison.

Besides the criminal case, Sarah keeps on trudging and as the years pass, my "enthusiasm" for keeping this "project" going is waning as is my mother's endurance. Every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are my days of dread. The entire "getting Sarah to bed" thing, what used to be a "start to finish" task of about 35 minutes that now, with the added necessities, the task can take up to an hour and fifteen minutes. It all depends on how strong my mother is at the end of each long day in this house. It's just a bitch of a way to end my usually trite days.

And so the years drag on, the holidays go by without much energy and the workload just increases on me. I have written before, but the older they get, the less the clean, the slower things take to get done, and the driving is becoming a concern. I told myself today that I would prefer to die than have to take care of my father and mother by myself. There is no one left in this family. The quality of living suffers more and more as ALS continues to ravage my sister and, at the same time (as if anyone cares in this family) my brain. Honestly, it's one thing to live a "normal" life away from parents and then to come home (or have them move in) but to have to give up a potentially viable life to take care of a sibling with ALS and now watch the parents enter their final years is a load I really don't care to endure as time marches on. What the fuck am I supposed to do? "Deal with it?". Fuck that. I have "dealt with it", as my dentist of 40 years told me last week "with the strength of Job". My body has taken hit after hit from all the years of stress and I am just fucking tired of living their lives. The sooner ALS wraps up its' misery tour on all of us here, the sooner I get in my car and drive to a hotel at the beach and begin anew. Spend some days in a hot tub, then nights on the dance floor, I'll be good as new..........................?

Criminals suck. Last week my sister, mother, a caregiver and I made the 18 mile trek to downtown, waking up at 6 am (earlier for the caregiver as she had a 20 minute commute to our house) and we all arrived a few minutes early to supposedly meet with our asshole in court. Within minutes, the judge announced that our asshole had a lawyer who had a schedule conflict and so we had to postpone the hearing for two weeks. Unfucking believable, although I was "warned" by my uncle and others that the worthless dregs usually find ways to postpone their day in court - especially when they know, deep down, that they really are in for a whipping in court. What the asshole doesn't know is that his "failure" to find a decent lawyer only fuels my certainty on ruining his life in ways I do not even know yet. To drag my sister out of her bed, my 80 year old mother and then a caregiver who has to be paid, really, really shows the total disregard for others as was the case when the asshole first entered our lives. I now know some how other "victims" feel when they are "taken".

I have spent just as many hours trying to get my "case" together" as the hours I spent fixing the asshole's incomplete and shoddy work. I even had an estimator come in and I could really cry to know just how much the jerk "took" my mother for and what the actual cost should have been. I just had no idea and I thought my father was keeping up with the expenses. I was wrong. Now I am trying to find remedy any way I can. One way is to keep the pressure on in ways I can't say here.

However, last week a warrant for the POS was issued as he failed to show for two other cases pending against him. I don't know if he is in jail but I expect so. I will find that out in the morning. I hope he is having a miserable time and suffers in his every waking moment like my sister does. Fuck him. I will have my way with him in a few days. In the fourteen years of my living amongst ALS here, my sister has never seen me in a suit. Well, she saw me last week and I heard she was taken aback. I looked damn good, like I mean "business". Bring it on. I like the courtroom when I am not on the side of the defense for a change. LOL and so it goes.

My mother turns 81 this week and I am truly starting to worry about her ability to care for her daughter. When I saw Stephen Hawking and the article that he has had the disease now for 50+ years, I became horrified. I am in no way capable of enduring ALS for another twenty years or more.

I won't. Period.

Sorry sis, but I will have to move on in one way or another. What a great way to see one's future -

The caregivers are trying different ways to move Sarah around when they have to move her.

At times, when I walk her, her legs give out and I have to catch her from dropping to the floor.

One caregiver failed to catch her as she stood her up and I was called to pick Sarah up.

Going the same distance from even a year ago takes twice as long as then.

Sarah exerts herself so much when being walked that she is almost out of breath.

Sarah can only really move about twenty feet at the most. A year ago she could walk to the van outside.

God damn the day when she can no longer stand with someone's assistance. Then what do we do?

++++++++++++++++++++++++

I finally added up the checks from our asshole con man and it is over $100,000. I had no clue that he sweet-talked my mother all those months at the kitchen table while I was at work and my father was in his bed. When I bring an estimator in to tally up what should have been a "true" amount for the work that wasn't even finished, I am certain he will come up with a number of $35,000 or so and that won't include the hundreds of hours and my own money I had to spend to cover up the "average efforts" of his helpers.

And so the damage done by the "literal" motherfucker has spread to my job as I was written up for "blowing up" while a customer was in front of me because of a stupid employee's mistake who should have been fired years ago for various reasons including picking his teeth and nose in front of customers while putting their food in bags. Of course the manager blamed me for the whole thing as he has only sucks up to customers and his employees are "always wrong". Screw him and God damn ALS for putting me in a shit job with stupid people that help to fuel my anger from having a motherfucker "take" my mother's and father's hard-earned money which we could really use now to start thinking about what the hell to do when Sarah can no longer stand on her two noodle-thin legs. And so, with my criminal warrant for the asshole coming due at the end of the month, I keep finding new ways to "hang" him legally. Forget my family, he has screwed so many people for so long that finally the "wagons" are banding together and his time is coming due. Personally, if I were him, suicide would be his best option.

Every single day, something he did or did not do causes more work, more effort and more time which could all be better used just to take care of Sarah and now, my parents. He has caused my family to waste hours and hours of time (that he has neither clue nor care) from all his lies and deception. With a few more days, I can finally stop working on completing the projects he started almost a year ago. "See ya in court - you lying loser"....

Let's hope 2012 doesn't bring any more physical harm to them and that Sarah can get the speech equipment she so desperately needs. That my parents can get away from this rigor more often and find some tranquility that they so sorely require. Simple enough.

Oh, and "the asshole" gets what he deserves.

Have a Healthy, Wise and Prosperous New Year and thank you for reading my account on living amongst ALS........................................................